Lately there’s been a lot of talk about TikTok getting banned in America. With its over 170 million American users, people are waiting anxiously to see if they can continue watching their hours of entertainment every day. Although, is this really something to be concerned about, or is it just another attempt at taking TikTok off the market? In my opinion, there’s no way that TikTok will get banned, and here’s why…

Let’s start with some background: On March 13, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in favor of the ban by a vote of 352-65. This bill will now move onto The Senate where it will be voted on in the coming months. If passed by The Senate, it will then move on and be the decision of President Joe Biden, where he will decide if it’s signed into law.

Although, why is the government even trying to ban the app? Well, TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is a Chinese-based company. The government has expressed security concerns that the company may be able to steal sensitive information from American users through the app and pass it on to the Chinese government. This would be very detrimental and dangerous to American society. As of now, this is only a theory, but it’s what many members of the government believe. In fact, TikTok has already been banned from government issued devices in 39 states, although not in California.

So, this seems likely, right? If there’s a possibility the app is dangerous to America, why wouldn’t the government ban it? Well, there’s something in the proposed bill that states TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance sells it to an American company. This means that if they decide to sell, TikTok will still be available to Americans, without the national security risks. In my opinion, there’s no way ByteDance wouldn’t sell the company, considering an estimated 20% of their users are Americans. If all those people were stopped from using the platform, TikTok would lose massive amounts of users and money. Of course the company doesn’t want to give up the company that they built up from scratch, but it’s either they make billions of dollars by selling it, or they keep it and lose massive amounts of money.

With its estimated $100 billion price tag, it won’t be any easy task finding a buyer. Although, there have been a few people reportedly interested in the purchase. These people include Shark Tank’s own businessman Kevin O’Leary, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick,  and social media company Rumble. These groups would likely obtain the money through large groups of investors.

So, even though it looks likely this bill is going to get passed, that doesn’t mean TikTok will be banned. It will likely just be sold to an American company, because ByteDance would lose way too much money if they didn’t do this. So there you go, you can now rest easy knowing that the app used by billions will not be banned in America. Do you think TikTok should be banned?